"Whether you're a patriot, a hero, a champion, or a murderer, a monster, an abomination, all depends on the point of view. For those whose side you fought for, they would naturally see you as the former. Those who lost their loved ones or more to your hands, however, would see you as the latter.
One man's hero is another's monster." - Gaius Semprus Nikodemus, General to Xaliburnus to Conqueror.
Luca was just a village kid.
His home was a humble one, just him, his mom, his dad, and his older sister Lucia. They lived a humble life, as they worked the plot of land assigned to them by the God-King's infinite generosity and kindness.
Their family had little to their name, yet they wanted for naught as well. They diligently cultivated their plot of land, submitted most of their harvest other than what they needed to live to the temples, and blissfully listened whenever one of the holy ones had time to preach the God-King's words to their unworthy ears.
They would be considered poor peasants most everywhere, yet their family found contentment, a sense of greater purpose, and a shoulder to rely on through their belief. They basked on the infinite mercy and kindness the God-King offered them, and in return gave their faith, and pledged their lives to his service.
When Lucia came of age, and was brought to the nearby city to be tested by the holy ones, the family rejoiced because she was found to be blessed. The whole village celebrated that Luca's sister was one of the blessed, and was inducted as one of the God-King's own hands in this mortal world.
That celebration lasted for a good year, before unpleasant news reached even their small village to the south of the Holy Kingdom. News and rumors of cursed undead things - they called themselves something else, but the God-King's omniscient eyes could not be fooled - trying to settle down in the cursed land to the west.
Luca knew of those lands, a horrible place where beasts and monsters roam freely, where even the trees were rumored to hunger for human flesh. It was a land cursed by the heavens, it was said.
Most of the villagers shrugged off the unwelcomed rumors after a few days. The monsters and the untamed land would swallow the undead even if it proved to be true, they reasoned.
A year peacefully passed before more unwelcome news reached them. The undead had already begun to build their city in the cursed land. They had triumphed over the nature there, likely through blasphemous means God frowned upon.
Such indignity was not to be tolerated, the God-King had decreed from his high seat. To share a border with filthy undead was unimaginable. A crusade was announced by the God-King's will not a month later.
Luca and his parents had traveled from their village to the southern city of Zefirous, just in time to watch the southern detachment of the God-King's hands depart. They joined the crowd which cheered for the departure of the blessed soldiers, the enforcers of the God-King's wills. They cheered even louder when they spotted Lucia amongst the marching men and women.
Then they returned to their village, and waited for the good news. Surely, a mere few thousand undead would never stand a chance before the God-King's fury and his tens of thousands of enforcers.
When they received news of the disastrous end of the crusade some months later, Luca's parents were gobsmacked with disbelief. The boy himself was more occupied asking for news of the expedition's survivors.
Less than one in twenty of the crusade returned alive, most in a horrible state that practically rendered them invalids for the rest of their days. Many of the returnees had gone insane, some had even asked blasphemous things and questioned the God-King's teachings.
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Lucia was not amongst those few who returned.
Not half a year later, more bad news struck. News of the damnable demi-humans to their south mustering for an assault, like an animal that had smelled blood and pounced without thought.
The holy one Luca had seen often, an old kindly priest named father Henry, had called the village to arms. All those too young, too old and infirm, were made to evacuate to Zefirous. Everyone else was to bring their weapons.
Their homeland needed them. The God-King asked for their services, and the villagers were all too eager to answer his call.
Luca lied about his age, and was allowed to join his parents in the fight. He was twelve, but he was always a big boy, large and strong for his age, easily able to pass himself off as older. They had gathered together with folks from four other nearby villages, and waited in the jungles, around the lone path that passed through their region.
It was a very uncomfortable experience, with the insects that relentlessly bit him, and the horrible smell from the mixture of mud and animal dung they were made to rub on their clothes. Even so, he saw the reason why when their quarry came into sight at last.
What arrived was a mixed group of demi-humans of every sort, from short, stout hairy ones that inhabit the south, to some that looked like animals, and even some hated greenskins from the north. There were some humans - traitors one and all - amongst them as well, talking to the lowlife demi-humans as if they were equals.
Many of them smiled and laughed to each other as they marched unaware of the death that awaited them.
Those smiles were erased when the archers - hunters from the gathered villages - barraged the demi-humans with arrows from their perch atop the trees on either side of the road. The arrows felled some, injured others. Then the gathered villagers, strong in their belief and faith, charged with a vicious roar.
Luca and his parents were slightly to the back of the formation, and they missed out on most of the action, as the filthy infidels were beaten, though not before they took their toll in blood. A few of the infidels - less than fifty - escaped to the south, but the rest died where they stood.
Nearly half of the gathered villagers were grievously injured or perished in the battle. The people from Luca's village were mostly spared of the worst because they happened to be closer to the rear.
He envied those that died. They had received their chance to be of use to the God-King. His only solace was the belief that the God-King must have another purpose for him; another place where he could be of use.
Those that remained, excepting those whose injuries were so severe that they could not be saved and thus was granted mercy, marched south, to the frontier fort where the rest of the infidels were.
There Luca saw the largest gathering of believers he had seen in his life, nearly twenty five thousand of them in all. People from villages all over the south of the Holy Kingdom, gathered together for their righteous cause.
The infidels inside the fortress gave a hard fight. A week they had stalled the believers; a week their gates and walls, fangs and blades, denied the believers their just cause.
A week Luca seethed. Father Henry had picked his family amongst some others to be kept in reserve in the back, for the final push that would spell the end of the infidels. It was a week during which Luca saw many friends and acquaintances leave to fight and never returned.
He envied them.
Finally, the promised day arrived. The infidels were beaten back from the walls, even if they used cowardly trickery to collapse the walls on some unfortunate believers. Luca and his family honored their sacrifices with a prayer even as he climbed the pile of rubble under which they were buried.
When they reached the infidel lines, those in front of them had already driven them away from the first earthen ring that served as a makeshift wall, and they charged towards the second.
They charged, climbing atop the pile of corpses that had accumulated before the makeshift walls, as they knew their late comrades would have asked them to, they bellowed praises to the God-King as they neared the top of the wall.
Luca, who was behind, watched as a long, burly arm holding an axe swooped in from below and nearly cleaved his mother in half. He lost sight of her as she fell to the other side, her hands clenched on the haft of the axe.
When his father reached the top of the wall, he jumped down with an angry bellow and his knife brandished. Luca arrived just as one of the stout, long-armed demi-humans wrenched his axe free from his mother's body and cleaved his father in half at the waist.
Yet even in death, Luca's father drove his knife into his foe, and latched on to the demi-human's arm with his other hand. It took a moment for the demi-human to rid himself of the weight of Luca's father.
Luca charged with a bellow, the short spear his parents gave him pointed towards the demi-human's face. He saw the demi-human swing the vicious axe in his hand at him, but Luca did not care.
A smile of satisfaction graced his lips as the tip of his spear, driven by his weight and momentum, pierced the demi-human's eye, and further, deeper into the brain. Yet there was no chance for Luca to rejoice, for the wicked axe cleaved through his shoulder at the same time, sliced through flesh and bone, and halved his heart in twain.
As he coughed blood, and the light faded from his eyes, the only thought in Luca's head was whether the God-King had been pleased by his efforts, and a sense of gratitude, to be given a chance… to serve.